Brahma Chellaney
The Alaska summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was more than a high-stakes encounter over the Ukraine war. It signaled America’s recognition that its own missteps have helped drive Russia closer to China, fueling a de facto alliance that poses the gravest threat to U.S. global preeminence since the Cold War.
Washington’s miscalculations helped build the China-Russia partnership it now fears most.
In a world where the U.S., China and Russia are the three leading powers, the Alaska summit underscored Trump’s bid to redraw the great-power triangle before it hardens against America.
The president’s Alaska reset seeks to undo a policy that turned two natural rivals into close strategic collaborators, by prioritizing improved U.S.-Russia ties.
Trump’s signaling was unmistakable. In a Fox News interview immediately after the summit, he blasted his predecessor. “He [Biden] did something that was unthinkable,” Trump said. “He drove China and Russia together. That’s not good. If you are just a minor student of history, it’s the one thing you didn’t want to do.”
The remark captured the essence of America’s dilemma. Two powers that are historic rivals — one vast in land and resources, the other populous and expansionist — have been pushed into each other’s arms by Washington’s own punitive strategies.
For decades, the bedrock of U.S. grand strategy was to keep Moscow and Beijing apart. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 opening to Beijing was not about cozying up to Mao Zedong’s brutal regime, but about exploiting the Sino-Soviet split by coopting China in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power.
That strategy helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily but geopolitically.
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